I like the song “Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me.” It sounds like an echo of St. Francis. Peace is something we create, not something that is merely handed to us. And we each must be creators of that peace.

The same thought applies to other values as well. When I hear Trump tell bald-faced lie after bald-faced lie and then excoriate the press as “fake news,” I find myself wishing someone would teach him to sing, “Let there be truth on earth and let it begin with me.”

One of the most common and obvious mindgames played by insecure people of low self-esteem is to berate others. A variation on this theme is the deflection of attention toward an enemy. Reagan’s foreign policy, for instance, would have been nothing without Communism as his foil. Small people can only define themselves by what they are against, since they tend to not know what they are for.

Trump is having trouble letting go of demeaning Hillary Clinton but he has chosen another target: the press. The hilarious irony here is that he expects the press to sort through all the junk he speaks without holding himself accountable for filtering his own speech. Again, it is simply deflection as he hopes by denigrating the press the American public will not notice that he is incapable of distinguishing between truth and falsehood himself.

The kindest thing to say is just that Trump has never figured out how to grow up and take responsibility for himself.

If you doubt that Trump operates out of a desperate sense of weakness, pay attention to what he said in his latest press conference when confronted with the truth in opposition to his falsehoods. His oft-repeated claim is that his electoral college margin was greater than anyone’s since Reagan. A reporter recited to him the actual numbers, which show that his margin was quite low, besting only W. and not coming close to anyone else’s.

Trump’s first response was that he was talking only about Republicans, though even that is not true. Finally, in a soft and meek voice, he could say only that he was passing on something which he had been told and which he thinks he may have read somewhere. “Weakness” is clearly far too mild a term to describe his character and the working of his mind.